Minister of Transport Merja Kyllönen regards it as important that a functional selection of measures be found during the government budget discussions in order to adapt to the sulphur regulations for marine transport. Kyllönen regards the measures supporting environmentally friendly technology as the best and most sustainable adaptation measures.
Kyllönen is especially worried about how certain measures presented in the media are connected to transport infrastructure funding.
"One presented measure was to decrease shipping route fees or to abolish them. The discussion should consider that the shipping fee income is used to fund basic infrastructure maintenance and ice-braking," stated Minister of Transport Merja Kyllönen.
"Infrastructure maintenance is based on customer need. Cutting the funding from infrastructure maintenance and ice-breaking would increase the transportation costs in the long term and would thus decrease the benefit received from cutting the shipping route fee. A deterioration in the condition of the transport infrastructure directly affects the safety and fluency of transportation," worried Minister Kyllönen.
